Can overclocking CPU damage HDDs?

Q

Quick Draw McGraw

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Nov 2, 2004
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:confused: I read up on overclocking (probably not enough), adjusting FSB etc and decided to take “La Plunge”. When I entered my Bios I found an overclock setting: standard, +5%, +10%, +20% and +30%. Changed to +10% and all appears well.

I have an uncluttered full tower with 4 large stock case fans (1 front over HDD’s, 1 rear, 2 side) stock CPU heat sink and fan, video card stock fan. Monitoring temps with MBM5: idle running case temp 28c idle CPU 30c.

However since I just changed to “increase 10%” I don’t know what 10% I increased? FSB? 10% seems a modest increase (to 2.86 GHZ) so I don’t expect any problems but what is the worst that can happen overclocking (besides the computer catching fire and burning down my house?)

Can overclocking damage the Hard Drives at all or will it just trash the CPU and/ or MB if damage is caused?

System:
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe
Enermax 460w PSU
P4 2.6GHZ 800FSB
2 x 512 Corsair DDR 3200 CL2
WD IDE 80GIG HD
Maxtor IDE 250GIG HD
AGP Nvidia 6800XT 256
OS Windows XP Pro


Oddity: Before Overclocking I uninstalled several games and unused programs from my HDD then defrag’ed. I then tried to run Sandra Lite (SiSoftware) clicked on the Icon but nothing happened? Uninstalled and Reinstalled still won’t run? Installed MBM5 and it opens and runs fine maybe I have a problem specific to Sandra? Or need to change a setting? (more like it's time to reinstall XP)
 
When you increase your CPUs FSB you increase the speed of every other part of your PC (PCI cards, AGP card, HDD). Your motherboard will divide the CPU FSB by its divider to determine your PCI/AGP bus FSB i.e. If your AGP/PCI bus gets above 40/80FSB then you can damage your hardware (most often your HDD dies first).
 
It would probaly currupt the data so the os wont run before the hd gets damaged. Happened to me many times and my old ass hd's still work.
 
My main concern is losing data, so if my HDD's are running at safe temp then there should be no HDD problems due to overclocking?
 
That's why there is a PCI/PCI-e lock ;)

Set it to 33Mhz/100Mhz and forget about it.
 
My main concern is losing data, so if my HDD's are running at safe temp then there should be no HDD problems due to overclocking?
Click to expand...

If that is your main concern, then lock the PCI/AGP bus.
 
Even with the AGP lock you can still corrupt a hard drive. If your ram is making errors it can cause data loss on the HD. The easiest way to prevent this from happening is get Memtest86. Immediately after overclocking in the BIOS, run Memtest86 BEFORE booting into windows and make sure your memory is handling the data properly. If it is, you are safe to boot into windows.

Eclipse has written a nice overlocking guide in the AMD forum and before anyone says, "but the OP said he has an intel chip" the methods and concepts are the same even if the exact steps are not.
 
Memtest86- great tip. I ran this - no errors! :)
Haven't run the 3 hour #9 test yet though, later.
I was unaware the test would loop itself and restart. Didn't notice until Memtest had run through 4 times (90 minutes) :rolleyes:
But it did show me the overclocked values: FSB 219 RAM 146 Mhz DDR292 CAS 2.5-4-4-8 :p
And when I rebooted my CPU temp was 44c under load from running the test but it's dropping back down now at 34c as I type.
 
If you run for an hour and then reboot - is the CPU temp reported by the bios accurate, or does it cool down during the 10-20 seconds your PC is rebooting?
 
Varmint said:
If you run for an hour and then reboot - is the CPU temp reported by the bios accurate, or does it cool down during the 10-20 seconds your PC is rebooting?
Click to expand...

Depending on your HSF your cpu will cool down pretty fast. My cpu cools back down to idle temps within 30 seconds.
 
When I overclocked with Clockgen and my computer froze, sometimes, very rarely when my computer would boot, windows would pop a message saying that ntusers (or something close) has been restored, but nothing seems to have happened yet
 
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